Diamond Song's Diary

August 12th year 4LT

Night had nearly fallen by the time I made it back to the estate. Lazuli walked me back to the front garden and after that she walked off of the road and into the trees to go see if her brother was still helping out at the barn.

Mother was waiting for me in the dining room. Her mouth was curved into a deep frown as she looked up from her bowl of oats. I felt my stomach drop as her eyes followed me to my chair. I knew what was coming, any moment now she would yell at me, tell me I would never make it to Celestia's school. She would say I was grounded until the end of the exam for skipping out on my studies.

My heart pounded in my chest as the moments ticked by. I was going to throw up. Why wasn't she getting onto it? Was she trying to torture me? Finally, her horn glowed pale red and a scroll floated up from under the table. "What are the magical uses for quartz crystal!?" She barked. I slowly turned to face her, her expression was firm. Wasn't she going to yell at me? "Um, they can be used to absorb excess mana from unicorn foals with unstable magic and are used as batteries in inexpensive magical devices," I answered back. She wasted no time getting to the next question on her list.

This went on for several minutes, I didn't even notice when Nanny brought out my bowl and sat it on the table.

When dinner was over I was sent straight to bed. Mother didn't mention me leaving the house once. A part of me wondered why, the other was just happy nothing happened.

~*~

I woke to the sound of knocking on my bedroom door. Rolling out of bed I wobbled over to the door. My horn flickered with warmth as I grabbed the doorknob in my magic and pulled it open. I began to tell Nanny good morning but it wasn't her. It wasn't anypony I knew.

He was a tan earth pony stallion, his yellow mane flowed over his head like water before flipping up into a wave over his face. "Why good mornin' little miss. The name's  Good Briar, Ah'll be filling in for your Nanny while's she away." He held out his hoof for me to shake it but I stepped back instead.

"She didn't say anything about leaving... Where did she go?" Good Briar frowned.

"Ah don't really know, whatever it was it must have been real urgent. Your folks didn't even have time to find a replacement, your Ma had me take a break from the orchards for this."

"Oh.."

Nanny didn't even say goodbye.

Both of my parents were out of the house for the day so it was just me and Good Briar. He had a scroll from my mother listing all the things I needed to study and even my mothers flash cards. We sat in the library for a good chunk of the day studying together. I could tell most of the stuff he was quizzing me on confused him. He couldn't even read magical script, though with him being an earth pony I guess that was just to be expected. Nanny never did this kind of stuff with me. I tried to explain that but he said they were orders from my Mother.

After lunch, we returned to the library for levitation practice. But instead of the normal exercise, he took out a large egg shaped piece of rock. It was grey and perfectly smooth. I lit my horn and lifted the rock easily into the air and he reached out his hood and pressed down on it knocking it out of my grasp and causing it to land on the carpet with a loud thud. "Hey! Why did you do that."

He gasped, "Sorry, Sugar, that's just what it says to do in the note your Ma left."

"Really..?"

"Is this new? Ah'm sorry I didn't tell ya."

I frowned, "It's fine." I lit up my horn again and lifted the egg back up into the air. Now that I knew what was coming I collected a mass of mana into a cone under the rock. It took him longer to push the rock out of my aura this time. I gritted my teeth trying to push more magic under the egg. It was great practice for the real test. I wondered why we hadn't been doing this all along.

After a while, he sat the stone egg on the floor and rested his hoof on top of it. Then he told me to try and pick it back up. I wondered what Nanny was doing. If she would start doing this with me when she got back. I sighed and lit my horn back up.

Mother returned home for dinner just as I was walking up the stairs to my room. I ran up to her right away asking her questions about Nanny but she just asked me about my studies and shooed me off to bed. Did something bad happen with Nanny? Was it my fault? Is somepony in her family sick... or worse?

I miss Nanny so much. I couldn't stop thinking about it the whole day.

Nanny, please come back soon.